Apparatus and methods are provided for conducting peer-to-peer communications.
Peer-to-peer network protocols or technologies allow individual nodes or devices to communicate directly with other peers, and may be contrasted with infrastructure-based environments in which a required central node (e.g., a server, a router, a switch, an access point) passes communications between different nodes. One benefit of direct peer-to-peer communication is that it avoids unnecessary routing and processing of communications through other devices.
Some other technologies that allow for peer-to-peer communications require significant power consumption by individual nodes, which is a principal concern for devices that rely on battery power (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptop and notebook computers). Excessive power consumption by a peer might be caused by inefficient discovery of services and/or other devices, by having to act as a central node, by inefficient use of the device's transceiver, and/or other factors. For example, requiring a device to continually or regularly poll or query other devices will cause it to consume significant amounts of power, especially for a wireless device travelling through different spatial regions.
Further, some networking technologies or protocols that support peer-to-peer communications do not coexist well with other technologies. For example, in a wireless environment, some peer-to-peer protocols are not flexible enough to share a device's radio, antenna and/or frequency spectrum with other protocols or between applications (e.g., to maintain a Bluetooth® connection), or to share such a resource efficiently.